1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium suitable for recording with aqueous ink, particularly to a recording medium suitable for ink-jet recording.
2. Related Background Art
Ink-jet recording is a method for recording images and letters by ejecting fine droplets of ink onto a recording medium such as a paper sheet. Ink-jet recording is rapidly becoming popular in recent years for various applications because of its high recording speed, ease of multicolor recording, flexibility in pattern recording, and because image fixation is not needed. Multicolor ink-jet recording is coming to be used in full color image recording since it is capable of giving images comparable with images formed by multicolor gravure printing or color photography, and is less expensive than multicolor printing when the number of reproduction is small. With improvements in recording speed, fineness of recording, and full color recording, the recording medium is required to have better qualities in addition to the improvements of the recording apparatus and the recording method.
Hitherto, various types of recording mediums have been disclosed. For example, recording sheets having a layer containing alumina hydrate of pseudo boehmite structure are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,879,166 and 5,104,730, and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Application Nos. 2-276670, 4-37576, and 5-32037. The prior art recording mediums involve disadvantages as follows: occurrence of beading of ink dots, due to insufficient absorbency for a large amount of ink in color image printing; likelihood of being scratched by sheet delivery device due to insufficient surface hardness; likelihood of the ink-receiving layer surface cracking due to insufficient bonding strength of the ink-receiving layer; low circularity of printed dots due to insufficient uniformity of the ink-receiving layer; and low gloss of recording medium due to less orientation of the pigment.
The beading mentioned in the present invention refers to a phenomenon in which dots irregularly move in the plane direction of the surface of an ink-receiving layer when the ink is still fluid before it is fixed in the ink-receiving layer.
The present invention has been made to offset the above disadvantages.